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Saturday, July 15, 2017

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: The new European ‘hipster right’ and the question of identity

They want
to preserve the racial and cultural identity of Europe. They want to deport
non-European immigrants. They want to close down the mosques. They want to
reassert Europe as being of, and for, Europeans.

No, we’re not on about some bunch of old closet Nazis grumbling into their beards. They’re young, they’re bright, they’re well educated and brimming with worldly savvy. They are referred to as the ‘hipster right’ – the Identitarian Movement.

They
started in France and the movement has now caught on strongly in Austria and
Italy where they grabbed public attention when members tried to stop a MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) ship from
leaving port to ‘rescue’ illegal migrants. They have vowed to get out to sea in
their own boats and shadow NGO craft with the intention of disrupting ‘rescue’
missions. They raised the funds to acquire their own ship through ‘Fundme’ in
record time – an indication of the way their message resonates with many
Europeans.

“Soon we will be a
minority in our own country”

I can
understand it if your initial reaction is “What terrible people these are, they
will be responsible for the death by drowning of thousands.” But think again,
please.

The
Identitarian case is that those NGOs are the ones largely responsible for the
massive migration invasion and the deaths associated with it by providing a
shuttle service for illegal migrants, thereby encouraging the ‘people
smugglers’ to increase the flow – now a torrent. And if the NGOs concerned know
that (despite their emphatic denials), that makes them culpable.

This is not
just an anti-immigration lobby group talking. An Italian public prosecutor conducted
an inquiry earlier this year into the activities of NGOs involved in ‘rescuing’
illegal migrants as they have clearly broken Italian law relating to the aiding
and abetting of illegal entry into the country. According to Reuters on 3 May
this year, he had reported that he “had evidence of phone calls between people
smugglers and aid groups, but … had no proof that could be used in court.”

As for the
argument that runs “If we don’t rescue them, they’ll drown”, the Australian
approach of towing them back out into the high seas or dumping them in some
wholly unappealing place like Manus in PNG resulted in the closing of that
invasion route and the concomitant decrease of deaths by drowning to zero. The Mission: Defend Europe site (http://defend-europe.org)
puts it this way:

We demand the implementation of the “Australian
model” in Europe. Frontext has to prevent the human trafficking across the
Mediterranean Sea in cooperation with the Libyan coastguard. All illegal
migrants have to be picked up, rescued and brought back to Northern Africa. (I wonder
whether the use of the verb ‘rescued’ is being a tad sarcy….)

The
Mediterranean migrant crisis is not about refugees because 99% of the illegal
migrants coming in from Libya are not refugees. This year’s crop have mostly
been sub-Saharan Africans seeking a better life (i.e. European welfare services
and payments). There are still some Middle Easterners among them but with ISIS
on the ropes it is difficult to make a case for them being refugees. Other
groups include Bangladeshis – I didn’t realise there was any civil war, or
pogroms, there.

“Close the borders”

We need to
have a long, hard look at the motivation of groups that encourage the influx of
illegal migrants into their countries – the sort of crowd that stands at
railway stations with ‘Migrants Welcome’ banners. They portray themselves as
being driven by humanitarianism. But are they, given that they are pandering to
economic opportunists?

There is an
ideologically-driven agenda at work behind the scenes. It is fuelled by
contempt of the West, its heritage and values. Its world view is a neo-Marxist
one in which the White races are the bad guys and now have to do penance
through racial and cultural self-negation. This damning description does not
apply to them all – many are just naïve little do-gooders who think they’re
doing the right thing. But one does not locate the ideology driving a movement
by looking at what its minions believe.

Hollow-eyed and hollow-headed
little PC-groupies.

But OK, let’s do that…. so that
means we can send the other 99% back to where they came from, right?

Even where
the neo-Marxist paradigm is not at the forefront, White guilt certainly plays a
major role. Angela Merkel personifies this misguided driver of the open-door
policy. In so doing she is bringing about the ruination of her own society and
people – something she will hopefully pay for dearly at the polls in the
foreseeable future.

Identitarianism
is about the European identity, which is necessarily tied to being ethnically
European. Yalda Hakim asked Lorenzo Fiato, the Italian organiser of the
movement, a personable young man of around 30, whether he thought that to be
Italian required being White. This question strikes me as being in the same
league as asking whether becoming the Pope requires being a Catholic. A
Nigerian or a Somalian may carry an Italian or Dutch passport and even have
been born in Italy or Holland but s/he will never be Italian or Dutch. In case
that sounds awfully racist, exactly the same applies the other way around – an
Italian or Dutchman carrying a Nigerian or Somalian passport who may have been
born there will never actually be a
Nigerian or Somalian. One can not take ethnicity out of this equation.

There is a
fundamental difference at work here between Europe and immigrant societies such
as the US, Canada, Australia and NZ. Interestingly, when 19th-century
writers used the label ‘New Zealanders’ they were referring to Maoris. ‘New
Zealander’ later came to mean ‘someone of British origin who regards NZ as
his/her home’ (Incidentally, NZers like to claim Ernest Rutherford as a NZer
but he was as British as a Devonshire Tea and the fact that he was born in NZ
did not change that an iota at the time, hence the Poms claim him as theirs!)
What does it really mean to be a NZer today? Bear with me a little longer…

The rise of
the Identitarian movement has given me new hope for Europe. I foresee it
becoming a major political force, perhaps not as a party in its own right but
as wind in the sails of established parties such as the Front National, the Dutch PVV, and other nationalists.

The light at the end of the
tunnel: “Europe’s Future – Identity, Love for Country, Patriotism”

There will
be major obstacles. The real fascists
– the ones on the Left – will pull out all the stops to silence them. The
charges of ‘racist’ and ‘xenophobe’ are already flying thick and fast, but those
epithets have been so overused that they are losing their clout. John and Jane
Q. Public are not entirely daft and are starting to see them for what they are
– smokescreens to detract attention from the insidious agenda of those
levelling them at those who dare to stand in their way. Besides, this is no bunch
of intellectually challenged skinhead thugs we’re dealing with but mostly
tertiary-educated, well-informed, intelligent and articulate young people –
those who will populate the professional classes and contribute to tomorrow’s
intelligentsia. The Lefty-fascists must be starting to quake in their boots.

Societies
made up largely of immigrant groups tend to create their own unique identity,
although the ties to the motherland of the dominant group are invariably
obvious. With increasing ethnic and cultural diversity, this connection may
become weakened and a truly unique national identity that transcends immigrant
origins emerges. The US is an excellent example: an American is an American
first and foremost, and of European, Chinese, African, Arab or whatever descent
as a subsidiary level of identity. Much the same can be said for Australia.

NZ has a
problem in that its ‘identitarianism’ has been commandeered by the bicultural
lobby. This involves a coercive amalgamation of selected aspects of the two cultures
being merged and freezes out a plethora of other immigrant groups. It is high
time we asked ourselves exactly what it means to be a 21st-century
New Zealander. We hear about ‘the NZ way of life’ and use the term ‘Kiwi’ as
though it had a standard meaning, but when the chips are down there is no ‘NZ
identity’. Until we sort out exactly what that entails, we will continue going
down the road of make-believe bicultural hybridisation by diktat.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek BA, BSc, BEdSt,
PGDipLaws, MAppSc, PhD is an associate professor of education at the American
University of Beirut and is a regular commentator on social and political
issues. Feedback welcome at bv00@aub.edu.lb

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

IMMIGRATION CONCRETES Current immigration debate refers to immigrants in general as if they were abstract people in an abstract world. But concrete differences between immigrants from different countries allow us to make a fair stab at determining whether their coming here is good or bad for New Zealand.

Too much current immigration debate is conducted in terms of abstract ideals, such as "We are all immigrants." Of course we are all descended from immigrants. But we are also a nation of people who wear shoes. Does this mean we should admit anybody who wears shoes?

The time is long overdue for immigration to be discussed in terms of empirical data about particular immigrant groups. This means hard data on such things as which groups' children do well in school and which do not; which groups have high crime rates; which groups pose an acceptable risk in terms of nurturing and harbouring potential religious terrorists, and which groups are over-represented on welfare rolls.

Such data is available if the government was disposed to collect and aggregate it. Immigrants from some countries are seldom on welfare while immigrants from other countries often are. Immigrants from some countries are typically highly educated and skilled, while immigrants from other countries typically lack schooling or skills. Immigrants from some countries are a good fit with our Judeo-Christian culture (without necessarily being Christians), while others are not.

Immigration policy must be framed in the context of a massive welfare state that is already a major, inescapable fact of life. We need immigrants who will hit the ground running, not go straight on welfare, stay there for life, and make large numbers of babies who will repeat the cycle.

Those advocating accepting anyone who wants to come and live here also ignore the fact that the free international movement of people is entirely different from free international trade.

Buying cars, cameras, televisions, shirts, or petroleum from other countries is not the same as admitting people from those places or indeed any other place. Unlike inanimate objects, people have cultures and not all cultures are compatible with our existing New Zealand culture.

The Western world in general has been discovering the hard way that admitting people who are culturally mismatched and always will be soon becomes an irreversible decision with incalculable consequences. If recent terrorist attacks on the streets of Madrid, London, Boston, and Paris don’t make the scales fall from our eyes, what will?

Surely those who already live in New Zealand have an absolute right to say who else gets to live here. Instead we are told by our so-called “betters” that a seemingly endless amount of diversity is “good” for us.

Has anybody yet asked how much diversity is “enough”?

Immigration policy must be based on “Look before we leap,” not on the abstract notions about abstract people generated by those chasing that warm glow of non-judgmental multiculturalism.ENDS

Barend, We have had a couple of refugee drops on the unsuspecting small communities in the South Island, and it might be difficult to see the welfare burden, and probably impossible to know if there are front line Islamists posing as political refugees. The Visa applications from members of their families can be expected soon. For a while NZ First remained at 8 to 9% in the polls, and when they received a lift recently, Labour and Green reversed their open border policies, so that they would now like less immigrants and more of the more dangerous economic and social refugees.Our present Government's sheer apathy to the effect of Immigration, is publicly noticed in a broad sense and they are not getting away with their handy GDP graphs. I pick NZ First to take around 14% votes, and we would like to see the Immigration Minister Whitehouse replaced by his NZ First counterpart. A friend of mine who predicts the slow cruel collaboration with Islamafication of Australia with the help of the sickly liberal Government there, left for the Netherlands recently. He wrote that the first thing he noticed was a social cohesion between Europeans in Holland, so he started riding a bicycle, doesn’t want a car, and is practising guttural expressions. He sees Netherlands as likely to resist the excesses seen in Sweden France, UK and Germany.The frog will heat up slowly in Australia and New Zealand, after all what's a few generations in the Islamist invasion which has been in operation for 1500 years

Barend is overlooking the fact that there are no native New Zealanders.Being a relatively young group of Islands, all populations have had to immigrate here in the first place. Maoris were certainly not the first to arrive, & only politicians with an agenda have allowed them to make that claim. The N.Z. 'way of life' is forever changing with each wave of immigration. Since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, which made us one people under British law, all who have arrived since to make this country their home, must be considered N.Z.ers provided they obey the countries laws.Politicians who allow any ethnic group to consider themselves superior, are actually committing treason. John Key should have been imprisoned, not knighted..

Visiting Europe last year, my wife and I observed that in once proud cultural centres we couldn't help but notice the large numbers of migrants usually clustered around railway stations parks and other public places. Some were begging, some were sleeping rough, most were just hanging around and quite intimidating. In France we saw people washing themselves and their clothes in once majestic town fountains. Yet thousands more arrive every day. Europe will have to harden up and like Australia start turning around the boats to their points of origin. If not European city's will become like the very places these refugees left. Overpopulated, large groups of unemployed and a hot bed for those with a grievance, hang on, this is already the reality.

The attitude is not unreasonable. European nations have participated in horrendous wars. Millions, including disproportionately the most able, killed and were killed horrifically. In the final analysis the motivation was preservation of a culture and way of doing things. Ironically, in the major conflicts the opponents differed in little but language. For the ordinary citizen life may have changed little and not necessarily for the worse, if they had surrendered at the outset. Yet now we have infiltration by vastly different cultures with totally different inherent ethics, rooted in the ancient ignorant past, and barely acquainted with civilisation. With the tradition to breed prolifically whatever the circumstances, and our blind faith in democracy, these conquerors will achieve in a very few generations the destruction of cultures which millions died to preserve. Sadly our cult of the PC makes it too dangerous for anyone but obscurities to point out the hazard, let alone take steps to counter it. Instead the PC indoctrinated encourage infiltration. They think the new arrivals will integrate and show gratitude. Instead, envy at what recipient nations have achieved leads to resentment and revolt. The Germans have especial cause to be concerned. Despite two world wars disastrous for them, they retained their identity and culture which has enabled them to become the most successful nation in Europe. Their general drive, ability and order seems a characteristic worth preserving. After all the nation has been through, to introduce fast multiplying groups with very different motivations, and who are unable or unlikely to fully adopt the national culture, and who will rapidly erode or dominate it, seems pure folly.

If Islam was not a religion hell bent on taking over the entire world, and in brazenly promoting jihadism by the regularly slaying of all infidels to achieve its ends, do you really think that immigration would be such a big deal?

At the Human level we are all identical and in an ideal world should be able to migrate and live anywhere we damn well choose (like it used to be), it should be one of our basic freedoms as a citizen of our planet. Buts whats happened, the opposite? Well basically us Humans are slowly (more quickly lately) going NUTS..

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